


Black Envelope

by laliquey



Category: True Detective
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Halloween Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 00:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2488526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laliquey/pseuds/laliquey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set around 1996. Rust and Marty travel for an investigation and stay in an unfamiliar house. Marty has a great time, Rust not so much.</p><p>If you're looking thru my old works (first of all, thank you!!), maybe give this one a try! It doesn't get much traffic but I really like how it turned out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Envelope

**Author's Note:**

> For the [TD Halloween Challenge](http://thisissomehalloweenshit.tumblr.com), inspired by karategirl448's [haunted house prompt](http://thisissomehalloweenshit.tumblr.com/post/99181394496/rust-and-marty-haunted-house-could-be-them-going). Yay Halloween! Yay Challenge!

“It could just be a coincidence,” Marty said, tapping fingers on the steering wheel. “Twins bein' more common nowadays and all. You think?”

“No.”

Rust first saw the story on CNN one night when he couldn't sleep: two Alabama matched sets were down by half, and within twenty miles of each other. It was unusual because it was boys. Strong seventeen year old boys, both vanished, leaving hollow brothers and distraught mothers behind.

Then their fingers showed up in a corn maze. Then a pair of scraped-down jawbones returned to where they were last seen alive like bloody boomerangs.

Rust couldn't stop thinking about it, and naturally the local police said come on over when he called.

“Awful noble of you to volunteer us for this,” Marty said. “That's not a joke, by the way.” The non-joke was that every Tuscaloosa hotel was booked up tight as a tick thanks to the Volunteers-Crimson Tide football game. “I'm happy to come over and look into this, but anybody who knows fuck-all about the SEC knows about the Third Weekend in October. It's a rivalry so big it's even got a name, Rust. _The Third Weekend in October.”_

“The game doesn't always fall on that date, Marty," Rust countered. "An' you might wanna watch that vein in your forehead. It really shows."

Marty showed his middle finger and got one in return. They'd fallen back into their old scratchy-wool interaction after a brief honeymoon phase following the shootout shit, but Marty had every right to be irritated now. The only place he could find to stay was a half hour's drive east, B&B romance-type shit that already made his skin crawl. They'd reserved separate rooms, but he had a weird sitcom feeling he couldn't shake off.

“If by some unholy mix-up we end up in the same room with a four poster bed you're sleeping on the floor.”

“I'm a lot less interested in sleeping with you than you think,” Rust said, and went back to thinking about the missing boys. His gut said that the pieces were going to get bigger.

They drove in silence until the odometer crept up to the target number and Marty turned down a road leading to a tree-lined drive. The place was beautiful, a mansion as grand as the day was long.

“What makes it antebellum? The pillars?” Marty asked.

“Antebellum's a point in time not an architectural style. It means pre-war.” Every structure on earth could probably be classified as such, but Rust decided to keep his mouth shut.

“Huh. Well try an' behave yourself. This place is probably full of football fans who don't want to hear your un-American apathy on a sport the rest of us happen to care about.”

Rust muttered something about the Longhorns, and they were greeted on the porch by an older woman with grape-sized pearls and tall pile of shellacked hair.

“Welcome, welcome! We're happy to have you, so long as y'all aren't rootin' for the Vols.”

“No ma'am. We're not here for the game, we're here on business,” Marty said.

“Well I'll make it my business to make sure you have a nice stay. Y'all can call me Ms. Pearl.”

That was easy enough to remember. “Well thank you, Ms. Pearl, it's quite a place you got here. My wife's always naggin' me to take her someplace like this.”

“Maybe she'd quit nagging if you ever did.”

Marty smiled. “I doubt it.”

His assigned room was up a curved set of walnut stairs. He'd later report it as a monument to masculinity, with a hunting frieze embossed on a wall panel and lots of dark wood and burgundy red.

“I have a feeling you're our smoker,” Ms. Pearl said, and led Rust to the only room that allowed rabble like him. It was an old parlor off the back of the house that had a comfortable bed, an interesting window, and a heavy crystal ashtray. That was about all he needed.

They each unpacked a weekend's worth of clothes and somehow got corralled into an informal reception with atomic mint juleps and all the other guests. Most people were from out of state, feigning genteel interest in each other and crunching on cheese straws. Marty met a lot of people he liked, especially a retired Atlanta doctor who supported the Falcons on principle but truly loved the Saints.

Ms. Pearl made rounds with a little silver pitcher and dumped a fresh load of bourbon into Marty's sweating glass. “Ma'am, I believe you're trying to get me drunk.”

“Nonsense. It's southern hospitality, young man.”

“Young man?” he laughed. “Now it sounds like you're trying to seduce me and it just might work.”

Rust had slipped outside to get away from the fray and get a feel for the air. There was a femininity about it from the perfume of the tea olive shrubs hugging the front porch, which reminded him he probably should have told the girl he'd had three tolerable dates with that he was leaving town. Oh well.

Marty followed soon after. “Kinda rude to wander off like that.”

“Sue me, I been sittin' all day.” He enjoyed a long drag of his cigarette and looked back up at the house. “Anyway we're hardly here for any time - there's no point gettin' to know anybody.”

“That sounds like one of your big antisocial metaphors. An' here I thought you were doing better with that kind of thing.”

Rust half smiled and continued his walk out to the road with Marty a step or two behind. The hum of cicadas sounded like the throat of the ocean, and it took a half mile to realize that the flattened black snakes pressed into the pavement were actually roadkill possum tails, their bodies long gone.

It turned over and over in his mind like a sculpture puzzle. Why twin boys. Why any of it. He strained for any nuance or filament that might tie them together and forgot so completely about Marty that it startled him when he spoke.

“You could keep walking all night, I bet.”

“Maybe.”

“Well I'm turning around. October light an' all...pretty soon it'll be too dark to find our way back.” Rust shrugged and reluctantly followed, though he had a moment's recreation looking for early stars in the darkening sky.

A generous spread of canapés was laid out back at the house – not really meant to be dinner, but it was enough for Rust. He excused himself to bed while Marty stayed up, shoveling spiced pecans into his mouth and talking to one of his new friends about NCAA basketball and other subjects of transient importance.

Rust wanted a good night's sleep so he'd be extra-sensitive the next day and not miss anything. Already he'd started picking up on things he didn't notice when they first got there, like the yellow-green decay underlying the air toward the back of the house and the taste of water out of old copper pipes.

He read in bed for a while and a cloud of new scent piqued his nose. It was a medicinal smell he hadn't thought about in years.

_Ether._

Claire once came back from a yard sale with an antique dentistry cabinet that was more ornamental than useful; it had a fold-out wooden wedge for drill bits, impractically small drawers, and the unmistakable smell of ether soaked through the entire piece. Rust hated it and made sure it mysteriously moved closer and closer to the garage until it made it all the way into the back of someone else's truck.

He briefly wondered if she was still pissed off about that, then clicked off the lamp and settled in. It was a nicer setup than he had at home – softer sheets and fatter pillows accompanied by the creaky, comforting music of an old house. He worked himself onto his side and waited to fall asleep, but the late demi-dinner and bourbon load wouldn't let him. He'd been doing better with it lately and tried what sometimes worked: breathe for slow counts of three, in and out, over and over until he slipped under.

He was just easing into a deeper stage of it when a sound brushed against the floor, the friction of something heavy being dragged, then a thump.

Rust held his breath and the rug fibers made another soft sound of pace and motion followed by a thump.

It was _scooting._ Something was scooting across the floor.

The white explosion of lamplight hurt Rust far more than whatever he'd hoped to see. And he saw nothing.

He reached out for his gun and buried it under the pillow just in case, then switched off the light. He couldn't breathe against a grid of numbers if he tried so he stayed still and listened.

A damp, cold hand circled his calf muscle and squeezed; he kicked like a mule with both feet until the pressure and tickle was gone. Sweat sprung out of him as he stilled and tensed.

 _I'm losin' my goddamn mind,_ he thought, once several minutes of silence had passed.

He pulled the kicked sheets up neat again, then reached over to the nightstand for a cigarette. Nothing appeared in the flick and quick crash of light. The familiarity of a deep inhale was the most calming thing in the world, and he felt better until the thing audibly dragged itself back over from where it had fled.

It settled next to the bed on the floor, some upper part of it pressed to the mattress. Like a shoulder.

A chill brushed his wrist and his arm shot back. Hot crumbs of ash scattered and the thing scooted over to the nightstand and slumped by the ashtray. “You want...you want a smoke?” When the energy in the room suggested yes, Rust carefully set the cigarette on the crystal lip and sat back in bed. “Take it,” he said, and watched, still, as the end embers glowed off and on in a cadence much like his.

He lit another and watched it smolder and disappear.

When he was too slow with the third, the thing lunged and clawed at his leg so hard he dropped his lighter. Then it charged up toward his head and reached for the column of his throat. A panicked squeak squeezed out as he swatted at empty air. “You can have 'em, okay? Fuckin' hell, you can have 'em all.”

Whatever force kept it on the floor Rust was grateful for it; he pulled a fourth cigarette out of the pack and waited.

*

Ms. Pearl was all southern charm in the morning, called Marty _sugar_ and brought him to a table set heavier than six rooms of guests could ever eat. “This is quite a house,” he said. “So much history an' all. A lot of it terrible, but still.”

“It's seen a lot of things, that's for sure. Parts of it were even used as a Civil War infirmary for a while.”

“You don't say.”

“You know what's amazing?” said the Atlanta doctor. “Civil War medicine. Especially amputations. The pictures are something. Piles of limbs, all jumbled up in a mess...”

Rust should get out here for this completely inappropriate breakfast conversation, Marty thought. “Is that right?”

“Darn straight. A Minié ball causes a very unforgiving wound.”

“Do tell.”

“Well, you know your firearms, so imagine what a .58 caliber chunk of soft lead would do to a bone. Ain't nobody can bounce back from that, you gotta just saw it off.”

“Dear, do you have to talk about this?” His wife shook her head in apology. “I'm so sorry. My husband's interests are a little strange. Ed, you're either going to disgust or bore this nice man so please just stop right where you are.”

“Really, ma'am, it's fine,” Marty said. “In fact, I know a guy who'd love to hear this. Let me go see if he's awake.”

He found Rust's door open a hair. That was unusual by itself, but it was even weirder that Rust hadn't been up for hours already, solving all the world's mysteries and getting impatient over Marty's sluggish catchup.

The fucker was still in bed. A crystal ashtray sat on the floor, ringed with spent cigarettes and his flask was tipped and empty off to the side. The lower half of one leg lay bare outside the covers; the vulnerability was just too enticing, and Marty was reaching to grab it and scare him awake when he noticed the darkness of the gun tucked under Rust's arm.

He backed away as quietly as he could.

More croissants for him that way anyway.

He returned to the table, where the doctor cheerfully described his bone saw collection until his wife dragged him upstairs to get ready to go. Marty was just smearing peach conserve on croissant number three when Rust appeared, stiff and moving slow.

“Morning sunshine,” Marty said. Rust's curls were tangled like weeds and he had the dull-dead eyes of a scarecrow. “You look like shit.”

“Didn't sleep very well.”

'That's too bad, 'cause I did just fine. In fact I can't remember being quite so comfortable. Why the hell were you sleeping with your gun?”

He wondered how Marty knew that, but it was low on the list of things that bothered him. “I can't stay in that room tonight.”

“Well, we already talked about this and you ain't stayin' in mine unless you want the floor.”

It shook something in him. “I don't.”

“You missed some great conversation just now. Just the kind of thing you want to hear when you're eating a nice slice of ham. My new doctor friend's got an interest in Civil War medicine and one thing in particular.”

Rust didn't ask, so Marty provided it for him. “Leg amputations.”

There was a clink and a crash and suddenly Rust was looking on the floor for the spoon he dropped.

“I'm not hungry. I'll wait for you outside.”

He trembled on the porch, aching for nicotine and to be anywhere else. He tried to find comfort in sunlight and the fine layer of dust on the car but couldn't stop looking at the tree-lined entry and the fields beyond. It could have been a battlefield, but if you panned back far enough that was true of anyplace in the world. Every divot could mark a death, a limb lost, a broken soul chained to the spot and reaching for something, anything. Like his cigarettes. Or him.

Out here maybe wasn't so different from being trapped in a room with it. It was the very reason they were there: the surest calculation that can be made.

The black envelope of death.

Sealed.

Not sealed.

He'd tried to be less of a pessimist lately. More for the people around him than for revising his own code, but some things hadn't changed and never would.

_It's everywhere._

 


End file.
